CES 2014

What an amazing array of new technology at the show this year! Lots of wearables and really interesting mashups. There were also lots of the traditional ‘things getting smaller, and tv’s getting bigger’. But two items really stood out for me. The DTS 11.1 / DTS headphone:x which provide amazing surround audio – and the Oculus Rift crystal cove prototype for surround visuals.

The Oculus rift prototype has a new 1920×1080 panel which really improves the resolution and allows text and UI elements to be easily readable. OLED for faster refresh, overall reduced latency with a whole host of techniques to get it down including strobing the display for short bursts as the head is in the correct predicted position! – and most importantly the external camera and IR LED’s provide full head tracking so you can move your head anywhere, its a huge improvement.

Combined with eye tracking, voice recognition and a 3d camera for hand tracking this is my perfect user interface scenario!

This image shows how the lens units take the slightly warped stereo views rendered onto the OLED panel and transform them into wide angle views for each eye. Very cool.

Also – it’s great to see so much Fingertapps software pre-installed on systems around the show. There were a whole lot on the Intel stand alone.